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As the school year winds down, we enter the season for reflection. For students, now is time for final performances, academic awards, and the accumulation of all kinds of accolades for the year. I am always a little in awe of Trinitas students as I look back over their accomplishments and realize all they have done, and done well, in a single year. Surely this euphoria upon reflection holds true for any hardworking student in any school—it is not reserved for Trinitas students. I am, however, always amazed at the number of Trinitas students who do so very well over the year in such a wide variety of activities. What I have found is that classical education exposes students to a broad range of experiences and then provides opportunities for students to learn, perform and compete in activities as different as baseball and drama. By encouraging students to drink deeply from many fountains of knowledge rather than specializing in one, classical education creates Renaissance men and women.

In contrast, American culture has been moving for decades toward more and more specialization in everything, which naturally leads to more specialization in education. The modern student is encouraged to devote himself to one passion, to say, I am a baseball player and can do no other; I will play in the major league or die. Or to say, I am an actor; I could not possibly devote attention to baseball this spring. For a student to be singularly focused and to become a virtuoso in a particular field is certainly admirable, but few students are able to achieve that level in spite of giving their best day in and day out. If a student devotes himself to one activity at an early age, let us say the violin, but never achieves greatness at it, what has he missed? What else might he have tried during his formative years? Wouldn’t the student do better to try a great many things, to learn a great many things while he is young, to be exposed to much?

Classical education by its very nature urges students to take up a variety of interests. Academics, of course, are a priority, but there is also a high priority on art, both applied and performing, and music, be it individual instruments or choral performances. Still there is room for athletics and community service. The education is broad, and it encourages students to drink deeply from as much of it as they are able. Classical is not a single course meal that pigeon-holes students into a specialization, nor is it a casserole that mixes together a little sampling of a few things, but it is a glorious feast that sets before the student rich and satisfying portions of foods he might never even have heard of but that he is nonetheless urged to taste—yes, and taste them all.

No better example of what I am talking about comes to mind than a partial rundown here of what Trinitas students have accomplished this year. I ask you to forgive me ahead of time if I sound a little boasty, but again, these students always amaze me.

Academics

In a school wherein academic standards are high and the academic program is challenging, nearly one-quarter of Trinitas students will receive awards for making all A’s for the entire school year. Another one-third of the student body will have made all A’s and B’s. There are no multiple choice tests here, no electives that give students a goof-off hour, only writing and public speaking and grammar and classical languages and logic and rhetoric and calculus and …

Athletics

We are a school of fewer than 200 students. The next smallest school in our conference is larger than us by about one third. We are the only school in our conference that does not allow homeschool students to play on our teams to broaden the pool of players. We allow our teams only three touches per week—no matter the combination of practices and games, they only meet three times per week. Yet our volleyball and baseball teams won their conference championships, and the soccer team was conference runner-up. Those are the only three sports we participated in this year.

Drama

Our students just finished an amazing show that was full of singing and set changes and actors playing multiple roles. They played to a sold out crowd for one show and a nearly sold out crowd for the next show. The actors were not the elite few who want to pursue acting as a career, but nearly half of the upper school students, some of whom have never acted before. It was a tremendous performance anchored by seniors.

Art

Our annual art show ended last week. Both walls of our Grand Hall were filled with beautiful drawings, paintings, photographs, and sculptures. More than half the school participated, showing off not only work they have done in art class, but even more so the work they have pursued outside of class on their own time.

Music

Last Friday night was our annual recital. Nearly half of the student body participated by playing a piano, violin, cello, or flute piece, or with a vocal performance. The performances were excellent, showing that the students have worked hard, not only during their short in-school weekly lesson, but for hours on their own time. At the end of this month every student from 4th through 12th grades will perform in our annual spring concert to close out the school year. If it is in keeping with past years, it will be phenomenal.

What is noteworthy here is that the things I have mentioned have drawn in the whole student body—not only one or two but many students have participated in every single activity listed above. Even more participated in most if not all of the activities. These are not virtuosos, students who specialize. They are students who have been introduced to worlds they may not have imagined were accessible before and have been empowered to try everything put before them. And because of the classical training and work ethic that has been nurtured in them, they do a wide variety of things very well indeed. Classical education is no path to specialization. It is broad and deep, and it empowers students to become Renaissance men and women, excelling at whatever they put their hands to.

An early look in Newsweek at a report that is to be published in full this June shows that Christians are the most persecuted group of people in all the world. The report, compiled by the Bishop of Truro, claims that the persecution of Christians in many areas is very close to meeting the United Nations’ definition for genocide. Why do we hear so little about this persecution in US media outlets? One reason may be that Christians in the US have largely escaped the kind of violent persecution upon which the report focused. In this country Christians have worshiped in relative comfort—even luxury at times—for more than two centuries. Make no mistake, though, Christianity is under attack here too.

You probably have not heard of HR 5, also known as “The Equality Act.” This legislation is scheduled for a vote on the floor of the US House of Representatives on Tuesday, May 14. It has been called by David Goodwin, President of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, “An existential threat to schools like ours.” David is right, but furthermore, it could be an existential threat to the free practice of Christian beliefs in this country. Below is a bill summary from Congress.gov:

Equality Act

This bill prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. Specifically, the bill defines and includes sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation.

The bill expands the definition of public accommodations to include places or establishments that provide (1) exhibitions, recreation, exercise, amusement, gatherings, or displays; (2) goods, services, or programs; and (3) transportation services.

The bill allows the Department of Justice to intervene in equal protection actions in federal court on account of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The bill prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.

Christians used to look to the the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 for protection from this kind of legislation. For decades our churches and Christian schools have been protected from violations of our religious beliefs, but according to a report in the Federalist, HR 5 specifically prohibits the RFRA of 1993 from providing a defense to any entity found in violation of the Equality Act.

So if the legislation passes, how bad will the damage be for Christians and Christian organizations, you may be wondering? Here are a few possibilities that concern me for Christian schools specifically:

Christian schools could be forced to admit students who openly embrace practices contrary to orthodox Christian beliefs or that violate the school’s statement of faith. Because the Equality Act is on par with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, schools may even be required to add a whole range of sexual identity choices to the non-discrimination statements they are already required to publish.

Christian schools could also be forced to hire individuals who openly embrace practices contrary to orthodox Christian beliefs or that violate the school’s statement of faith. Furthermore, schools may be required to provide as part of their health plans hormone altering drugs or to provide for surgeries for employees transitioning to the opposite sex.

Christian schools could be forced to allow biological males who identify as female to use restroom or locker facilities or dressing rooms designated for biological females.

Christian schools and Christian athletic conferences could be forced to allow biological male athletes who identify as female to participate in sports designated for biological females.

The Equality Act could make it illegal for Christian schools to hold some beliefs about sex and marriage that are considered essentials of the faith. The All for Freedom Coalition puts it this way:

The Equality Act takes aim at religious freedom itself. If adopted, it would partially repeal the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a federal law that passed with nearly unanimous support and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Religious freedom ensures that every person has the right to explore life’s deepest questions and to live consistent with those convictions in private and in the public square. Partially gutting a longstanding law that simply ensures the government does not impermissibly infringe on Americans’ freedom to live, work, learn, and speak consistent with their sincerely held beliefs runs counter to our nation’s commitment to tolerance and inclusivity.

While our brothers and sisters around the world fear for their lives in this age of persecution, Christians in the United States are enduring a very different kind of threat. Persecution takes different forms. We may not yet be in danger of bodily harm, but our freedom to practice our faith and pass it on to our children is under open attack. If you think this sounds surreal—if you think this can’t really be happening in our country—I encourage you to research the Equality Act on your own and to read about some of the lawsuits in places where similar policies already have been enacted. The threat is real. And even though the law, if passed, may eventually be defeated in the courts, it will cause Christians and Christian institutions much suffering in the interim. Call or write your congressmen and women to let them know Christians in the United States are opposed to this kind of attack on our beliefs.

I met a student recently who was about to graduate high school and the first two years of college all in the same day! Not only is that an impressive accomplishment, but also it is an accomplishment that has become increasingly common over the past decade or so. The rise of dual enrollment opportunities that allow high school students to take college courses has made it possible for thousands of American teens to graduate high school with an AA degree from a local college or university. Again, that is a pretty amazing accomplishment!

But what’s the rush? What is the end of that fast track education, a job? Why should we be in a hurry to end childhood so that our child can become another cog in the world’s economic engine? To be fair, I can imagine a few scenarios where a child needs to grow up and get to work to help the family out, even if the child only supports himself. The absence of a parent is probably the most common reason that comes to mind. Also, a child who has abundant siblings and parents of modest means might need to get to work as soon as possible. There are other good reasons, no doubt. Again, though, if the rush is only rushing to a career, and there aren’t extenuating circumstances that make it necessary for the child to enter the workforce, please consider slowing down.

Education is formative, and formation takes time. An education that is rushed through invariably is one that trims away anything that doesn’t seem practical simply because there isn’t time for it. Art, music, languages, literature, and composition are just the kinds of classes that get cut from the schedules of students on the fast track, but they are also just the kinds of classes that help students develop a sense of the true, good, and beautiful. They are the kinds of subjects that help us understand what it means to be good humans. The study of these things helps students get a glimpse of the good life. A life absent the study of these subjects will be something like a daily diet of dry toast when each piece could easily have been slathered with homemade strawberry jam. Is dry toast nourishing? Sure, nourishing enough, and you can have a piece of it in your mouth a lot quicker if you don’t take the time to properly slather it with homemade strawberry jam. But then, what have you got?

We slaves to the economic machine, have convinced ourselves somewhere along the way that education is completely utilitarian, a means to an end. But what end? We rush through education the same way we rush through everything as if it were just another thing to check off our lists so we can get to the good stuff. But what is the good stuff? A job? A car payment? Quarterly sales reports? Is that the good stuff we’re rushing to get to? What if the good stuff is the stuff we’re rushing through?

There is more to life than the American dream. There is more to being human than occupying a spot in the workforce. Whether your children are on the fast track or slow track, be sure to give them an education that helps them distinguish the good life from the daily grind.

School choice is a hot issue for the Trump administration, and it continues to be for the states as well. In Florida, for example, a bill is being debated in the closing days of the state legislative session that would create tens or maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of state scholarships for low to middle income Florida families to use at private schools.

On the one hand, Floridians should applaud this bill and ask legislators to support it. Giving students a way out of schools that aren’t measuring up or that aren’t safe or that simply are oppressive to some students’ religious beliefs is a wonderful thing to do. The opportunities created by a bold move like this for students who need those opportunities so badly are sure to lift thousands of children out of hopeless or near hopeless situations to a brighter future.

On the other hand, is accepting government funding a good idea for the Christian school? And to be clear, these scholarships will be purely government funded—straight out of the state’s education budget—not corporate tax credits like Step Up for Students administers. So this is different than anything we have seen in Florida since vouchers. Again, should Christian schools accept this money? The answer probably depends upon just what it is the school wants to accomplish—upon what the school’s mission really is.

Government funding for private Christian schools in the form of these proposed scholarships will come with certain strings attached. Make no mistake, no government entity has ever given away money without gaining some kind of control over the recipient, and this time will be no different. It is pure speculation to say yet what those strings might be in the case of the pending bill in Florida, but one need only scan the daily news to know the issues that cause lawmakers’ knees to jerk. One can think of a few questions to ask without even straining:

Will Christian schools that accept the scholarships be able to decline a student who does not fit the mission of the school? More specifically:

Will Christian schools that accept the scholarships be able to decline a student who is a practicing Hindu, for example?

Will Christian schools that accept the scholarships be required to enroll LGBT students?

Will Christian schools that accept the scholarships be required to enroll transgender students and then allow them to use restroom facilities that match their identity rather than their biology?

Will Christian schools that accept the scholarships be required to enroll students with disabilities they do not have the resources to serve?

Will Christian schools that accept the scholarships be required to change their curriculum to match what is taught in the public school system?

Will Christian schools that accept the scholarships, for example, be required to teach the theory of evolution as a foregone conclusion?

Will Christian schools that accept the scholarships be required to allow students to abstain from prayer, singing hymns and Psalms, or listening to the Holy Scriptures being read?

Again, these are a few strings we can imagine without trying very hard. Would these strings be a problem for every Christian school? Again, it depends upon the school’s mission.

In schools where evangelism is the main focus and putting warm bodies in desks is the goal of the admissions process, government funding might not clash with the mission. These schools tend to look very much like public schools anyway in their curriculum and extra-curricular opportunities and staffing and student body and in the way they structure their days. Having government funding come in with a few strings attached might not change much for such a school. As long as the Gospel is not forbidden, a school like this might not find government entanglement too restrictive.

In schools where discipleship of children from Christian families is the main focus and where academic excellence is an ever present goal, however, government funding might just create some insurmountable obstacles. In these kinds of schools the make-up of the student body is as important as the make-up of the faculty to accomplishing the mission of the school. The inability to decline a student who does not believe what the rest of student body believes undermines the mission. The inability to decline a student who cannot succeed in the challenging academic environment undermines the mission. The prospect of having the state mandate curriculum and objectives most certainly undermines the mission of the school. Anything that erodes the independence of a private Christian school that is serious about training students in Gospel living and giving them a high quality education compromises the mission of such a school.

For some Christian schools, the stakes are far too high to play the state scholarship or voucher game. The mission is too important, and the mission is not to make a profit or boast government-inflated enrollment numbers. For some Christian schools, remaining completely independent of government entanglement is paramount to mission. Christian school’s like these exist because their founders could not find for their children a distinctly Christian, academically challenging education in the government-run school system. To take funding from, and thus give control to the government is a step in the wrong direction for these Christian schools—a step backwards even.

If you’ve made the decision not to send your children to a government-run school because you want for your child a distinctly Christian culture in which to receive an academically challenging education, it might be a good idea to consider asking the Christian school you choose how much government funding it accepts—you just may be in a government-run school after all.

At other times I have written here about the importance of the home, church, and school being in agreement, and it is a message that bears repeating. Those three entities have the most influence over a child’s formation. If the home, church, and school have different messages about who God is or who His people are or how they are called to live, a child’s mind will be divided on issues that are foundational to her existence. For a child to flourish spiritually and emotionally, hearing a consistent message from home, church, and school is necessary. By that same standard, a classical education cannot take root and flourish in the life of a child if it isn’t being supported at home.

Often parents enroll their students in classical schools, not for the classical education, but because they are attracted to the culture of the school when they visit: children seem happy, polite, articulate, and mature; teachers don’t seem frazzled; the décor looks less like a school and more like an art gallery or cathedral; and the list goes on. Ironically, (or maybe not) these are sometimes the same parents who, two years into their classical experience, get frustrated with the study of Latin and Greek or the reading of so many old books or the absence of STEM.

Is there a bait and switch going on in classical education, these parents may wonder? No. What they do not realize is that it was the classical education that created the culture they were attracted to at the beginning. Someone will say, No, it is the Christian aspect of the school that creates the culture. Well, of course, that is part of it. A Christian classical school will turn out committed Christians while the non-Christian classical school will turn out what C.S. Lewis calls “clever devils.” But they will be clever devils who are polite, mature, articulate, winsome, and all the other characteristics that attracted the parents in my example to the classical Christian school in the beginning.

David Hicks in Norms and Nobility, his treatise on education, asserted that the end of a good education should not only be right thinking but even righteous acting. And that is what classical Christian education done well at school and at home is able to produce. Prospective parents who are attracted to the culture of classical Christian schools are being attracted by the fruit of classical Christian education. But fruit does not come easily, friends. Trees that are not nourished produce no fruit—perhaps even worse, trees that are nourished only part-time produce little or no fruit, or perhaps even bitter fruit.

Parents who lose patience with the curricula of classical schools, who grow to despise the time spent on art and music and Latin and theology, are despising the very nurture that produced the fruit that attracted them to classical Christian education in the first place. To get the fruit of classical Christian education, the home and school must work together. This idea may seem foreign to parents who themselves have had no classical education, but take heart, many have done it before you. It is possible.

I want to suggest a few do’s and don’ts for parents who are attracted to the beautiful culture classical education can produce but who may not understand how to support it at home:

Do read books. Put down those self-improvement books and let your children see you reading real literature. Depending on the age of your children, you might start with Lewis or Tolkien, but the options are nearly endless. Homer’s Odyssey can open up whole worlds, and fairy tales aren’t a bad place to start either. The bottom line: turn off the imagination-killing TV and be bookish.

Do trust the curriculum. Classical Christian schools are teaching your children using method and content that has produced great minds and righteous acting people for centuries. STEM, on the other hand, is a fad—the latest stopgap measure to rescue math and science test scores for U.S. public schools. Trust the curriculum. Sure, Latin isn’t being spoken on Wall Street, but there is something else going on when a student learns Latin. Be patient. Give it time. Openly support it so your child will not resist it.

Do try something different. Cancel the family video game-a-thon for next Saturday and go to the art museum or the opera or a play or the symphony. Study it before you go so you know what you’re getting into. Talk about it afterward. What did you like? What did you not like? What parts did you not understand?

Eat dinner together every night and listen to your child tell you the story of her history lesson from the week. Ask her questions. Make her think. Learn something about what she is learning. Be interested.

Don’t spend the afternoon and evening undoing what teachers have spent all day building up in your child. In an article over at the Circe Institute, Josh Gibbs said it this way, “The young man who attends a classical school— but spends his free time playing Fortnite, listening to Top 40, watching banal television, and gossiping on social media— is never going to receive a classical education. He will merely come near it and occasionally sense its presence, perhaps in the same way a superstitious man sometimes claims there is a ghost in the room.”

The culture that attracts so many parents to classical Christian schools is not a warm and fuzzy fluke, nor is it an accident of a bunch of nearly perfect people coming to the same school by chance. It is the result of classical Christian education. It is not only right thinking but also righteous acting. And it can be yours, but it is going to take a little work. I hope you will join us.

In case you haven’t noticed, children do things adults don’t; for example, children run. They just run to run, not to go anywhere or for any reason, but just for the sheer pleasure of running. They will also pretend-play with just about any item they find. A stick becomes a Greek sword, a jacket is shaped to make a baby’s blanket, and sofa cushions become a fort.

It is this last characteristic that is so appealing to teachers. It is one of the tools teachers can use to make a lesson come alive. I can tell my class the history lesson, and they can tell it back to me the same way, but if I want them to gain deeper understanding of the same lesson, I will use their God-given urge to play, explore, discover, and yes, touch everything to bring history to life for them. Trinitas teachers spend hours preparing hands-on activities to use in the classroom every day for this very reason, but occasionally we pull out all the stops and have what we call a feast day.

Feast days are planned with specific goals in mind using three basic components: 1) an individual or class project, such as a presentation, skit, or dance, 2) an actual feast around a table of food that is unique and authentic to what is being studied, and 3) hands-on activities that support the topic. It is this third component that I want us to consider here.

Doing and pretending to do through hands-on activities give our students the opportunity to go back in time and participate in history. Some activities they might actually do in real life, like chopping wood; some they will probably never do outside of a school activity, though, like churning butter. Either way, all those experiences give them a clearer understanding of the time period they are studying and a broader picture of how God has faithfully provided for mankind through the ages.

In this age when most everything is available ready-made, doing something “the way they did it back then” gives students an appreciation for the diligence and hard work it took to survive in earlier times. It makes them concentrate and work hard, and then they experience the joy that comes from completing a project or a difficult task.

Working with their hands allows children to wonder, imagine, explore and discover. Perhaps working on a hands-on feast day project will spark a desire in a student to learn something beyond the lesson. When a youngster whittles a piece of wood, maybe he’ll want to learn more about wood-working and be able to use that skill to serve others. Or when a young girl sews a 9-patch quilt square, perhaps she will want to learn to make quilts that will bless her family. Making an Egyptian cartouche affords students the opportunity to consider the work of a sculptor.

We have all heard children declare something to be “awesome,” but we don’t hear them define anything as being profound. The word profound, from the Latin “profundus,” carries the meaning of “beyond the deep,” but children have not been deep enough to have preconceived ideas yet. Everything is new, allowing them to discover something new every day. For children, a new experience is a wide-open portal to depths they haven’t even thought about exploring yet. When that experience is a hands-on experience, it can be profound.

Student: I want to marry someone I know really well. Look, I’m dating someone right now. But we’re not dating for fun. We’re dating to get to know each other better.

Gibbs: No. You are not currently in a relationship with a girl to “get to know her better,” and we both know it.

Student: What makes you say that?

Gibbs: I used that same pious-sounding excuse when I was your age and my parents didn’t know how to respond to it either.

Student: Go on.

Gibbs: What is the purpose of “getting to know her better”?

Student: To see if we’re compatible.

Gibbs: Compatible for what?

Student: Marriage.

Gibbs: You’re not compatible for marriage. You already know that.

Student: Why?

Gibbs: Because at sixteen, you’re not ready to marry anyone at all, which means you can’t be compatible for marriage with anyone in particular.

Student: Why not?

Gibbs: It’s a bit like trying to find a variety of cheese which suits the taste of someone who is allergic to milk. You don’t see a problem with dating in high school, but what about elementary school? Are you in favor of students dating in elementary school?

Student: No, but that’s different.

Gibbs: How is dating in fourth grade different than dating in tenth grade?

Student: Seriously? In fourth grade, you haven’t even gone through puberty yet.

Gibbs: Good. That’s one difference. Keep going.

Student: I could think of other ways.

Gibbs: When you think of them, let me know. While I am waiting, let me give you some ways in which fourth graders and sophomores are not different. Neither fourth graders nor sophomores are physically fully grown, neither are legally responsible for their own actions, neither pay for their own food or clothes or rent, neither have careers, neither has a high school diploma, neither is legally old enough to marry, neither can vote, neither can buy wine, neither can be drafted for war, neither has credit, neither can rent an apartment… I could keep going.

Student: That’s kind of insulting.

Gibbs: No, I would say it’s just not particularly flattering. Any other ways fourth graders and sophomores are different?

Student: Wouldn’t you say that a sophomore has a sense of self-awareness that a fourth grader doesn’t have?

Gibbs: Sometimes, but not always. A great many fourth graders are more obedient and respectful of authorities than sophomores, and I would say those are more important factors in determining readiness for marriage than mere self-awareness. The biggest difference between fourth graders and sophomores, at least so far as this conversation goes, is that sophomores want to date, but fourth graders don’t.

Student: You didn’t answer my question, though. I want to get to know my girlfriend better to see if we’re compatible for marriage.

Gibbs: For the sake of argument, imagine two fourth graders want to go on a date.

Student: Like I said, that’s different. They’re not ready.

Gibbs: Let’s say the fourth graders know they are not ready to get married, but want to get to know each other better. How long do you suppose they would have to date before they knew they were compatible as spouses?

Student: A long time.

Gibbs: How long?

Student: A really long time.

Gibbs: Why?

Student: They’re both still changing.

Gibbs: How old should you be before you get married?

Student: I mean, at least twenty-three or twenty-four.

Gibbs: Fourth grade is only six years behind you. Twenty-three is seven years ahead of you. Would you want the nine-year-old version of yourself choosing the girl you’d date in high school?

Student: I don’t even live in the same state I lived in when I was nine.

Gibbs: Right. If no one is ready to get married at the age of 16, then “getting to know” someone romantically in high school will simply terminate the relationship, because you will learn the person you are dating is not yet marriage-material. I don’t mean that as an insult. At 16, a person might have a lot of potential, but you should marry someone based on what they have done, not what you hope they will someday do. At 16, you just haven’t accomplished enough to be worthy of marriage.

Student: “Worthy of marriage”?

Gibbs: Yes. Marriage is a noble and high calling. Think of marriage as an honor which must be prepared for.

Student: So why aren’t dating couples getting to know each other better?

Gibbs: I didn’t say they weren’t getting to know each other better, just that knowing each other better is an accident of romance, not the purpose of it.

Student: What’s the purpose, then?

Gibbs: What kinds of things do you like to do with your girlfriend?

Student: Talk, go to the movies, text, listen to music, hang out.

Gibbs: Do you do all those things with your male friends, as well?

Student: Yes.

Gibbs: But you’ve never told anyone that you were going to see the new Terminator movie with Jackson and Lucas “so you could get to know them better.”

Student: But going to the movies is just fun. It feels good to hang out with friends, and friends have to do something.

Gibbs: Agreed, and the same is true of a girlfriend. It feels good to have a girlfriend and to be around your girlfriend. This is only right, though. A friendship should exist for the sake of enjoying another person. A friendship should exist for no other reason than itself, by which I mean the love of the other person. When our friends have ulterior motives for friendship, we feel betrayed and used. For this reason, I don’t buy the studious sounding claim that a high school dating relationship is some kind of investigation, some kind of fact-finding mission wherein an extensive study is being conducted to determine the viability of a marriage. You both know that people change a lot in the first few years after graduation. You are both curious about what the profound and sudden freedom, autonomy, and anonymity which comes with college will do to the other person. And you both know it would be dangerous to marry someone before seeing how they responded to all that.

Student: What if we go to college together?

Gibbs: In order to go to the same college together, you will have to begin preparing to go to the same college together at the beginning of senior year. This means you will both have to make a monumental economic and geographical commitment to one another while still “getting to know one another.” That kind of thing makes the relationship incredibly top heavy. It means that you’re asking the other person to undertake marriage-level commitments to you, but without marriage-level rights or marriage-level oaths to govern your conduct toward one another. Very few relationships survive that kind of strain.

Student: So, if dating in high school is such a bad idea, I guess you have a pretty low opinion of people who do it.

Gibbs: No, that’s not true. It tends to be the more responsible, more diligent students who date in high school. The number of rebellious Romeos at ACCS schools is pretty low, as far as I can tell. Dating in high school, especially a private Christian high school, tends to require a little ambition, and given that ennui and sloth are besetting sins of this age, I have a hard time heavily faulting a student who is striving and reaching, even if I think they’re reaching a little too far. If I had to state a preference for student body issues, I would far rather sophomores who were dating than sophomores with smart phones or sophomores who play video games.

Student: So if I’m not dating, what should I do if I want to prepare for marriage?

Gibbs: Do your own laundry. Get a lousy job bagging groceries as soon as you can. Poke your head in the principal’s office once a week and say, “I have ten minutes and nothing to do. Do you need some chairs or tables moved around or something?” Don’t get a phone. You’ll have to get one when you’re an adult, but hold off as long as you can. Learn to cook something basic, hearty, and tasty, so you can give your mother the night off every now and again. Figure out which one of your teachers lives the best life and follow him around like a shadow, do everything he does, ask him what he thinks of birth control, taxes, NPR, something controversial. Feel free to annoy this teacher with your interest in his life and opinions. Do pointless tasks with your dad— he probably drives to the city dump once a week or something like that. Go with him. It doesn’t matter if you say anything. It’s enough to be there with him. He’ll say something. Learn one book of the Bible really well, probably Ecclesiastes or Proverbs or St. Matthew’s Gospel. When you watch movies, watch black and white movies. Learn a few old prayers by heart which you can say while you walk from one class to another. My favorite is, “I know, O Lord, that I justly deserve any punishment Thou mayest inflict upon me, for I have so often offended Thee and sinned against Thee in thought, word, and deed,” but I also like, “Not unto my judgment, nor unto my condemnation be my partaking of Thy holy mysteries, O Lord, but unto the healing of soul and body.”

Student: Did you do those things to get ready for marriage?

Gibbs: Only two or three of them. The rest of them are things I do that keep me married, and so I assume they would be good in preparing for marriage, as well.

Student: I’m not breaking up with my girlfriend.

Gibbs: I understand. I never broke up with any of mine, either, and I still kind of wear that as a merit badge.

Student: But you don’t think my relationship will work out?

Gibbs: No.

Student: Why?

Gibbs: For the standard reasons. Sooner or later, one of the two people in the relationship realizes that marriage is not a possibility and then the whole thing begins to seem rather pointless. At the beginning of the relationship, both people are still too thrilled by the honor of having their existence affirmed by a member of the opposite sex to think about how profoundly tenuous the whole thing is.

Student: But what if the point of the relationship is to glorify God?

Gibbs: When you’re sixteen, you can honor God just as much in a friendship as in a romance.

Student: But the relationship I am in now has been so good for me.

Gibbs: I believe that. When I first began teaching, I was strongly opposed to every romantic relationship between students. Now, I am only mildly opposed to them. Romantic relationships often bring out what is best in young men. A high school sophomore with a girlfriend takes better care of his appearance. He spends money on someone other than himself. He even prays more and reads his Bible more. He has a sense of duty and obligation.

Student: Then why are you opposed to student relationships?

Gibbs: Because all that is merely the silver lining, and the silver lining does not last as long as the misery and confusion which results from a failed romance. Granted, a little misery is not the end of the world, and a young man learns a lot about the nature of the soul while tending to a broken heart. However, I think that most high school romances are based on faulty conceptions of romance and are generally evidence of a dangerous lack of self-awareness.

Student: But not every high school relationship is doomed to fail, right? Look, I know how it sounds, but what if mine is one of the rare ones which leads all the way to marriage?

Gibbs: That’s the dangerous lack of self-awareness I was just referring to. Some people who date in high school end up marrying. And some arranged marriages work out happily, as well. Would you like your parents to arrange a wife for you?

Student: No.

Gibbs: Me neither. That would be terribly strange, though I am sure it works out well every blue moon. You see, wisdom is really not concerned with outside possibilities, outliers, and unusual cases. Wisdom is concerned with human nature. Wisdom is concerned with what is normal, what is typical, and with what usually happens. Being wise means not making exceptions for yourself or treating yourself as a special case. Wisdom means regarding yourself as common, average, the kind of person for whom proverbs, maxims, warning labels, cautionary tales and generalities are applicable.

Student: So what does that have to do with dating in high school?

Gibbs: The kind of fellow who says, “I know pretty much all high school romances fail, but mine is going to last,” is already thinking of himself as someone for whom conventional wisdom does not apply. I don’t have a lot of confidence in someone who thinks of himself as beyond the authority of conventional wisdom. To be frank, no young man who thinks he is exempt from what is common or typical ought to be dating.

Student: But what if I’m trying to be wise in the way I date?

Gibbs: There are better and worse ways to go about nearly anything. Given that you’re a pretty responsible young man, I am quite sure you’re doing this ill-advised thing in a decent, orderly way. There are also more and less safe positions to be in when your car hits a brick wall.

Student: Very funny. Look, let me ask you one more thing— and I’m still not breaking up with her— but let me ask you one more thing. If God didn’t want teenagers involved in romances, then why does He inspire romantic feelings in teenage hearts?

Gibbs: A fine question. While God awakens the heart (and body) to the desire for romantic love, wisdom demands we learn to control those feelings, not be controlled by them. Man is made of the earth, and the earth must be subdued. A great many desires are natural, but we may not indulge them whenever and however we want. The desire for love emerges many years before it can reasonably (or legally) be satisfied, and the patience and self-control learned in those intervening years is, perhaps, the greatest preparation for marriage you can undertake. You might say that God inspires the desire for romantic love so early just so you can develop the necessary patience for marriage.

Student: But what about the few happy couples out there for whom none of what you’re saying is true? Are you saying that everyone out there who married after dating in high school is secretly miserable?

Gibbs: Absolutely not. I will gladly admit there are a few counterexamples to nearly everything I’ve said.

Student: It doesn’t bother you that your ideas are not absolutely, universally true?

Gibbs: No. They’re normally true, and I’m a normal person, which makes them very helpful for me. I have regular problems for which there are regular solutions, though I don’t pursue those solutions very tenaciously.

Student: Why?

Gibbs: Because I am not a very good person.

Student: What if I’m not a normal person? What if mine is a special, unusual case?

Gibbs: It might be. It just might be… I only have conversations like this one with students a dozen times a year.

– Mr. Joshus Gibbs, Great Books instructor at Veritas Academy in Richmond, Virginia as published at www.circeinstitute.org on January 24, 2019.

We’ve just packed away the tents and doused the fire on the annual Trinitas Father & Son Camping Trip. From beginning to end it was an opportunity for men to spend time with their sons and other men in a setting that disarms. The wilderness is no respecter of persons—a night sleeping on the ground feels the same for carpenters and bankers alike. Thus we were freed from the stations we occupy Monday through Friday and got to know one another better because of it.

The young men got to know each other better too. In a conspicuous area near the center of the campground was a big pile of hard-packed red dirt that a dump truck had deposited, presumably to serve as fill dirt that the camp caretaker can draw from over time to fill in washouts and potholes. The boys walked around the pile for the first hour as they worked with their dads setting up camp, apparently taking very little notice at all of the dirt pile. Once the work was done, however, and it was time to get a game of football or soccer going, some brave lad ascended the pile and proclaimed, “I am the King of the Hill!”

Well, as you might guess, his reign lasted about as long one of President Trump’s cabinet members. Truth is, it took about a minute and a half for every boy in camp to begin his own pursuit of the kingdom so that the average length of rule for the King of the Hill was about two seconds. The turnover began quickly and lasted all afternoon, into the night, and all day the next day. For the watching Dads, regime changes appeared violent at times, and it was all we could do to keep our inner mother from stopping the whole thing for fear of broken bones and hurt feelings. Somehow, though, we pushed past that, and because we did, some valuable lessons were learned by sons and dads alike.

Boys are made with a natural strength that yearns to be tested. They need to compete, to wrestle, to establish a pecking order. When they do not have a good outlet for those things to work themselves out, they may become bullies or sissies or cowards or other creatures that society despises. In a game like King of the Hill, boys are able to test their strength against other boys and learn where they stand with each other. This is play that edifies boys because it helps them understand their own strength, what they are capable of and what they are not.

King of the Hill also helps boys learn that teamwork and strategy can trump strength. In our game, we had boys from age five to eighteen playing. When an older boy ascended the throne, the younger boys would have to plot together how to take him down. Some bids were successful and some weren’t; nonetheless, it was a glorious sight to watch a half dozen yelling third graders charge the hill to bring down the much older and stronger king. It was reminiscent of scenes from Braveheart. This kind of play teaches our boys that with teamwork and strategy they can defeat a much stronger opponent.

There is also an element of stewardship here, especially for the older boys. The high school boys could very easily have flung little guys down the hill mercilessly, but instead, they had to learn to throttle back their own strength, to exercise control of their power so as not to seriously injure one of the little fellows. Of all the lessons boys learn about strength, this one may be the most important. A man must know his own strength and at the same time know that it requires even greater strength from him to restrain that strength. Men spend far more time stewarding their strength by controlling it than they do letting it run loose. This lesson has to be learned somehow, and far better for it to be learned at play than in a hundred other settings we can think of.

Finally, we dads learned to ignore our inner mother and let the boys go at it. Boys need to test their strength, find out what they are made of, fail, succeed, and fail some more without dad coming to the rescue for every skinned knee and bruised ego. We live in the age of helicopter parents who hover around their children, micro-managing every detail of their lives. Children of such parents stay dependent further into adulthood than any generation ever has—this is especially true of young men. In recent days we have learned of the next iteration of helicopter parents; they are called snowplow parents. They work behind the scenes to plow an easy path for their children, one free of any obstacle that might challenge their children or prove them to be something less than perfect. Because this is the kind of cultural pressure on parents, it is all the more important for dads to let their boys go at it, learning to be tough when their knees are skinned and to get over it when their feelings are hurt. Perhaps the greatest display of strength I saw all weekend was that of the dads restraining themselves from stopping a rousing game of King of the Hill.

King of the Hill may not be the magic cure for all we see wrong in our culture. But boys do need to feel their strength, taste their own blood from a busted lip without getting mad at the kid who elbowed them by accident, and fail miserably and then find the courage to get up and charge the hill again. All these little lessons prepare boys to be good men, and what could be the cure for a lot of what is wrong with our culture is a generation of good men.

I used to think our little house in the country was ideal for raising children, but eventually our children got old enough to leave the comfort of that little country house and go to school. Then I realized that the fifty minutes we spent commuting back and forth to school each day added up to 8,500 minutes (almost 142 hours!) of time spent in an enclosed space with children in the course of just one school year. That realization along with the other stresses of commuting caused me despair…until I learned how to use all that time for the benefit of both children and parents! What follows are three blessings we’ve received from using our school commute wisely.

Less school-related stress

It’s no secret that kids crave consistency. They need to know what to expect as well as what is expected of them. The hour spent getting ready for school in the morning is already challenging enough without adding uncertainty, confusion, and frustration to the mix. Having consistent morning routines that are carried over into the car ride to school helps children be ready to face the challenges of their day ahead. For our family, this means the kids know that we’ll be studying their spelling before the car leaves the driveway every morning. From there, we’ll move on to vocabulary, chronological orders, and even Bible memory passages.

Having a definite and limited amount of time available for our mobile study session seems to add a helpful element of urgency to the activity. In fact, the children have even selected certain stop lights and specific turns in the road as goals by which to mark their progress.

Academic success

Children need to learn early that one of the keys to successful studying is frequency. By making studying part of our daily commute, our children are learning the habits needed to avoid the cram/pass/forget cycle that not only undermines academic success but, more importantly, prevents true learning. Five minutes of studying every morning of the week will better prepare a student than an hour of cramming the night before a test.

A huge part of our morning routine that I believe contributes to mastery of the subject matter at hand is what I call the “waterfall effect.” For example, I quiz my eldest student on his assigned spelling words, but then he quizzes his younger sister who then extends the same favor to her younger sister, and so on. Not only are the children practicing their grade-level work, but they are also reviewing material from previous years. Such cyclical review helps to refresh and solidify knowledge in their mind that otherwise might be left behind.

More playtime

Just like us, children need balance in their lives. Though important, school and homework should not occupy an inordinate percentage of our children’s waking hours. By using our morning commute for studying and our afternoon commute for homework, we’ve been able to avoid (with occasional exceptions) doing school work at home in the evenings. After the rigor and structure of the school day, our children love being able to play outside as soon as they get home in the afternoon. This also leaves the evenings open for family activities such as reading, singing, and playing with siblings.

It would be foolish to assume that our children will continue to be able to complete all of their studying and homework in the car on the way to school and back—especially as they grow older and take on more challenging academic disciplines. But we plan to continue to leverage the time it takes to get from our home to school and back home again each day to reduce school-related stress, build habits needful for academic success, and create time in their busy days for healthy play and family activities.

One of my favorite teachers sometimes reminds her class of nine-year-olds that they came into this world with nothing and that they would have nothing still if their kind and benevolent parents hadn’t given them everything they need. She usually issues that reminder to her students in the context of a pep-talk about taking proper care of their clothes, lunchboxes, backpacks, pencils, binders—you get the idea, but it also extends to care of their desks, chairs, books, and other non-consumable items they use at school. She refers to these items under their care as their little kingdoms. If they can take good care of those little kingdoms, they will someday be prepared to rule well over larger kingdoms—households, businesses, churches, and governments, for example.

Stewardship is a good word to describe what the teacher is trying to get those nine-year-olds to understand. It is the idea that people ought to take proper care of the things they’ve been given, and especially so if those things have been entrusted to them for a period of time and then will pass on to someone else. This idea of stewardship is based on the Christian principle that God has given us the world to tend and take care of. There are about as many different plans for how Christians are supposed to care for the world as there are Christian denominations, but many Christians agree on the basic premise that God has made us stewards of the world and everything in it. Those Christians will want to teach and train their children to be good stewards as well—to rule well over kingdoms they will inherit. What follows are a few ideas for doing that.

Have your children make their beds each morning. A good steward will establish order by setting things aright, or putting things in their proper place and proper state. A bed that isn’t being slept in should be made up so it is ready, clean, and inviting when it is time to use it again. Development varies a little by the child, but most three-year-olds have motor skills necessary to begin learning this little chore.

The old adage, a place for everything and everything in its place, is a maxim for good stewards. Keeping good order and organization of all our things not only makes our surroundings more beautiful but also makes life just a little easier, especially when the most important task in that moment of life is finding one’s school shoes at 7 o’clock on Monday morning. Whether it’s school shoes, toys, or the kitchen scissors we used for yesterday’s art project, when each of our things has its own place and gets put back there as soon as we’ve finished using it, the likelihood of its not getting misplaced or damaged is greatly increased. Even toddlers can learn to be responsible for putting things back in their places. My wife’s rule when our boys were little was that they could not move on to the next adventure until they had returned everything from the last adventure to its proper place.

Teach your children the value of what you provide for them by having them pay to replace items they mistreat. This may seem a little harsh at first blush, so let’s establish some parameters. First, growing, happy children are bound to put holes in the knees of their jeans—let’s consider that normal wear; call it the cost of doing business. Not only that, but kids are going to ding the family sedan at least once while they’re learning to ride a bike. Again, that’s something you signed up for—wait until you start teaching them to drive that family sedan. The sort of thing I am talking about is setting off a pack of firecrackers in a lunchbox or using sister’s baby doll as a hammer. If children are taught from the earliest age to use things as they were intended to be used and not to be destructive, the consequences for doing differently should sting. When Billy has to spend some of his birthday money to replace his lunchbox, he will be getting a taste of what it costs Dad and Mom to keep him adequately outfitted for life, and he’ll likely think twice before mistreating other things that have been provided for him.

Have your children pitch in around the house. Children can do so much more than we give them credit for. Even children too young to go to school are able to fold laundry, help wash dishes and set the table, feed pets, take out trash, sweep, scrub, pull weeds, and all sorts of other tasks that allow them to participate in being good stewards of the household. Taking on these sorts of chores alongside their parents and siblings gives them a sense of belonging and responsibility. Nothing teaches and trains good stewards like practicing stewardship.

These are just a few simple things you can begin doing to help train your children to take proper care of the things you give them. With a little thought about your individual situation, you could add dozens of ideas. The lessons they learn will permeate all that they do when they learn them organically by working alongside you and take them in simply as part of who they are rather than as a checklist of jobs they must do.

Whether they are prepared or not, your children will inherit the rule of a lot more than a school locker or a bedroom—they will someday rule God’s world. You want them to be ready for that task, so start now by teaching them to faithfully steward their little kingdoms in preparation to faithfully rule the whole world when they are grown.